LCRA approves Dominium’s Arcade redevelopment plan

The city of St. Louis' Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority (LCRA) today approved Dominium Development and Acquisition of Minneapolis to move forward with its estimated $100 million plan to redevelop the Arcade Wright Building downtown.

Otis Williams, deputy executive director of the St. Louis Development Corp (SLDC), told the LCRA that while there are a number of variables in Dominium's proposal, he said that SLDC would like approval to move forward with specific negotiations.

Jeff Huggett, vice president of Dominium, said the next step would be to secure an official development agreement with SLDC. “The Arcade Wright Building is a very big building and a very complicated redevelopment,” he said. “We’re at the very beginning of this process.

“We have to do a full set of construction drawings and other preliminary processes that take time and a bit of money,” he said. “We outlined 24 months for that [preliminary] process in our proposal, but I hope we can do better than that.”

On Aug. 20, a city selection committee approved moving forward with negotiations with Dominium for the half-million-square-foot Arcade building redevelopment, sending the matter to the LCRA. The building is located at Eighth and Olive in downtown St. Louis.

If Dominium’s redevelopment of the Arcade Wright becomes a reality, it will be one of the largest projects that Dominium has undertaken to date, according to Huggett.

Dominium, which also led the $23.2 million conversion of the Leather Trades Lofts building downtown, submitted its plan Aug. 2 to SLDC to transform the long-vacant Arcade Wright into a mixed-use building, including both high-end and affordable apartments, as well as commercial space and underground parking.

In its proposal, Dominium offered to purchase the Arcade from the LCRA for $6 million.

Dominium said in its proposal that it planned to convert the dilapidated Arcade into 185 units of affordable artist live/work units on the fourth through 14th floors, similar to the artist lofts the firm rehabbed in the Leather Trades building. Dominium’s plans further call for 69 units of upscale market-rate apartments on the 15th through 18th floors, according to documents submitted to the city.

In addition to living space, Dominium plans on creating 73,000 square feet of commercial space on the first three floors of the building, as well as 143 underground parking stalls. While Dominium said there currently are no commercial tenants identified, the firm said it has had preliminary discussions with potential users.